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18 June 2017

Disneyland Paris on a Budget

For the majority of this year, myself and my housemates have had our hearts set on Disneyland as a holiday destination. But with the end of our student loans, the introduction of Council Tax (lol wot?) and all of us between jobs, we knew if we wanted to make it a reality, we'd have to do it on a budget.

And guess what, we made it!

So I thought I'd share how we managed to do 3 days in Disney for under £350, including travel, hotels, ticket prices and spending money! I've converted all of the euros I spent into pounds to make it more accessible for the majority of my readers.

TRAVEL = £58

After searching all of the options, sky, land and sea, we decided to settle on getting the Eurostar. As the most cost effective way to reach our magical destination. Thanks to a happy accident, which ended up saving us a lot of money, we booked a train to Paris Gare du Nord, from St Pancras. Then jumped on the metro (for less than 4euro), and travelled 40 minutes to the station within the Disney 'circle' just a 10 minute walk from our hotel. The journey was so easy, and by getting a separate metro instead of the Eurostar straight into Disney, we managed to save ourselves about £50 each way! By being flexible with when we left and arrived, we got ourselves low prices on the Eurostar itself, with £29 trips each way.

ACCOMODATION = £70

We had a little look at Airbnb and were very close to booking accommodation a little way out of the Disney area, when my housemate Becky, suggested looking into a hotel she'd stayed in before. Within minutes we realised the Hotel Adagio was our best option. The 5 of us were able to stay in a small apartment within the hotel, with its own kitchenette and a free shuttle directly to the parks! For 3 nights between all of us, it came to just under £350 each!

PARK TICKETS = £113

The Disneyland park tickets took up the majority of our budget, and the prices are much of a muchness. We bought a 2 days 2 parks ticket on AttractionTix, but to be honest, we found it the same on the Disneyland Paris site itself.

METROS/UBERS = £15

On our final day, we booked our Eurostar for 9pm, which gave us all day to head into Paris and explore the beautiful city! We bought metro tickets at the beginning of the trip to reach our hotel from Gare du Nord, and then a metro tickets back into Paris, deciding to get the stop near the Notre Dame. To make the most of exploring the city, we walked around for the majority of the day, along the River Seine, before getting a final metro ticket back to Gare du Nord for our train home. On the first night at Disney, we also decided to get an Uber home from the Illuminations, as we didn't realise there was a later shuttle (woops)!

FOOD = £10

One of the biggest costs, especially when you're at a resort such as Disneyland, is the food. So to save us some money, we decided to go to our local Supermarket, and buy 3 days worth of lunches, and dinner for a night. The total for this, came to £10 each. We bought a fresh baguette each day and made up sandwiches with French cheeses, we added some crisps, fruit and a snack bar (literally a school packed lunch) and for dinner made a big bowl of tomato pasta, with chorizo and brie. I have to admit, we had no regrets for our food choices and we could've spent far less if we'd decided not to eat out a couple of evenings!

SPENDING MONEY = £60

This is how much I spent in total, including 3 meals out, the inevitable purchase of Minnie ears, and an icecream! We had pizza the first night which came to £10 each, in Disneyland we bought dinner which was £12 each (we all had water bottles which we just lived off the entire time) and on the final night we treated ourselves to Moules à la Crème and a cold beer (classy), which came to £16 each. The Minnie ears were £13 and I bought 2 ice creams to ease the day too! Apart from the ears, I didn't spend any money on souvenirs, but obviously you could spend FAR more.

In the future, I'd love to do the Disney experience in full, staying in a Disney themed hotel, eating out with the characters and buying souvenirs to take home. But it was absolutely perfect for what we did, and I couldn't have had a better time! Disneyland does seem like a very expensive holiday for many, but it doesn't have to break the bank.